Have been meaning to write on this for a while, but all the words back-and-forth over the Stalinization of Health Care Act of 2010 kind of got us all on a single track for a while. But now finally getting the chance.

I lived in Cleveland for a short time as a kid and remembered it being kind of drizzly and grey, climate-wise. (Given that my family moved from there to the Queen City of the Plains in our great Centennial State, naturally, the clime left much to be desired. Not every place can be as beautiful as here!) However, I didn’t know much about the problems of the “Mistake on the Lake”, as it’s called by some.

Earlier this month, reason.tv posted a series of videos featuring the city’s favorite son, Drew Carey, and focusing on free-market solutions to the city’s issues. It’s a six-part series titled “Reason Saves Cleveland”. If you’re from the area, or are interested in urban revitilization through free-market principles and liberty, I recommend you take the time (about an hour altogether for all six episodes) to check it out.

Some jokingly say that Cleveland’s motto is, “Maybe Next Year”. Tongue in cheek, sure. But maybe there’s something to that. For that matter, ideas like these could probably help many other cities in a recession-era slump, and even some who are doing well but could also benefit from a capitalist shot in the arm.

6 Comments

I had heard about this and I thought it was really cool that Drew Carey committed himself to such a huge endeavor to improve his hometown (I also thought it was cool that he filmed the opening credits of his sit-com in and around the city, showing crowds of exuberant local residents at the city’s landmarks).

When liberals say that they are “getting involved to bring about positive change in the world,” they mean that they are campaigning for leftist politicians that will confiscate the wealth of successful, productive members of society to create huge, inefficient bureaucracies to administer massive new entitlements to be disbursed to their favored groups. But Carey is really doing what liberals only narcissistically think they are doing. I hope Carey is able to navigate around the leftist bureaucrats, politicians, and nay-sayers that will surely denigrate his efforts or try to block them because they know that his success will jeopardize their taxpayer-funded gravy trains and as always, expose the epic failure of liberalism and its crippling effect on growth and prosperity. He’s the real deal and unfortunately, the left will try and tear him down (I suspect he has already lost a lot of friends in Hollywood).

The city that really needs this kind of program is Detroit. I read recently that the city council is now voting on resolutions to literally make the city smaller because there are huge areas of land that have been swallowed by crime and decay and abandoned. There are no taxpayers left in the areas to collect from and the city can’t afford to maintain services for areas that have been deserted. I read that in the last 50 years, the population of the city has been cut in half because people just don’t want to live in such a horrible slum anymore. Of course, this is the legacy of liberalism and its corrupt grievance-mongers at the helm (the ones that are not already in jail). But they still don’t get it. The city remains a hostage to the Democratic Party and if someone like Drew Carey tried to save the dying city with his type of program, it would be quickly crushed by the entrenched overlords ruling that slave plantation. The cries of racism would be deafening and MSNBC would provide us with round-the-clock coverage of Al Sharpton’s We-Shall-Overcome-A-Thon.

It’s ironic–the Detroit city council is voting to reign in the city’s borders while in Washington, Obama is passing laws to effectively nationalize the policies of Detroit to cover all 50 states.

I do have to wonder how much Libertarian policy (open borders; free trade) have contributed to the decline of once-great industrial centers.

Free Trade and Migration

We support the removal of governmental impediments to free trade. Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders. However, we support control over the entry into our country of foreign nationals who pose a threat to security, health or property.

Free trade is not the issue, but multiculturism/open-to-illegals immigration certainly is. But the biggest problem in most big cities is liberal Democratic politics, graft, corruption on a scale that would make the Mob extremely envious, insane restriction of business, high taxes (St. Louis City, where I fortunately DON”T live, but do live in a ‘burb thereof, charges a 1% surtax on earnings…for the privilege of working in a crime-infested snake pit..and employers have to pay a .5% payroll tax. It’s ALL about graft and corruption and the large welfare population within…I work elsewhere so I don’t have to pay the idiotic extra tax which gives me NOTHING in return. Oh, and of course, every big city charges a bunch for parking, but hey, that’s the breaks…whereas most people in the ‘burbs can park for free. Shopping in St. Louis city? Destroyed. Crime, charge for parking…what’s the point?

Same bullshit in every major city in America run by Dems. Free trade has nothing to do with this.

It’s also about a culture of entitlement as well as the corruption and greed.

Did free trade destroy Detroit?

If so, why did so many automakers build plants in the United States, but just put them in non-union-shop states? And guess what, the workers still made good money.

Public service workers unions, which dominate major cities…a Democrat-beholden Mafia-style insanity (twice I’ve brought up the Mob…sorry, I don’t mean to insult them, they never did this kind of national destruction) that has broken most states and cities or is on the way to. What does their insane pension structure have to do with free trade or even illegal aliens?

Bupkes, beans, nada, nothing.

See Chris Christie, Gov of NJ, who is trying to stand up against their likes. I don’t know whether he will be successful, but if there is one thing that has killed the American economy, it’s not free trade, it’s not illegal aliens, it’s LIBERAL ECONOMIC ‘POLICIES’ and entitlements and the culture they have brought us.

Cleveland is a festering Hell hole of political corruption, pernicious government and welfare lethargy and entitlement that has to be placated so it doesn’t erupt.

One story: An old neighborhood that had gentrified fell into the eye of the political rulers. It should be taken by eminent domain and turned over to developers who could create a higher tax base on the property. That is to say, screw the citizens out of their homes in order to get more tax money for the government.

There is now a wide main street with emptiness everywhere and no development fools are in line to rush in. Who would have thunk it?

Cleveland has been a foreclosure ground zero. When Freddie/Fannie put people into home ownership on the sniff of a promise that they might get a job, nobody should be surprised when the house of cards collapses.